


Out of the Desert and into the Sun

by ishafel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-13
Updated: 2011-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:02:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean shops for a new car.  Post s1, now AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of the Desert and into the Sun

Replacing the Impala is like replacing family, and he almost can't bring himself to do it. Almost buys the first car he sees, parked in a guy's yard on the side of a two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere. But he wouldn't be Dean Winchester driving a red Ford Focus. Everything else has changed: he won't let that change, too. Not even for great gas mileage and a hundred thousand mile warranty with only twenty thousand miles used up. He thinks there wouldn't be room for Sam's legs, in a car that small. And then he remembers.

He and Dad find a junkyard somewhere in northwest Texas, not the one Dad bought the truck at, but one like it. There are a thousand cars on the lot, some of them half dismantled and some of them half-crushed. It's a little too much like walking through a graveyard, the wreckage of the American Dream. Which is Sam talking, more than it is Dean. The first one he stops to look at is a '65 Plymouth 'Cuda, the 273 V8, practically cherry and still not fit to breathe the Impala's exhaust. It's a collector's car, and he hates it on sight.

Keeps walking. Endless rows of ruined cars. People's pride and joy, sold for scrap. Somewhere in another state there's another lot, the twisted remains of another car. He doesn't let himself think about that. Doesn't want Dad to see him cry. Not over that, not over anything. This time it's Dad who stops, points to a '69 Rambler wagon, awkward and ugly with rust. Dean leans in to open the hood. There are so many parts missing it looks like a transplant patient. He pats the hood and moves on.

It's toward the end that he finds her, a while after he's stopped looking. He keeps his fingers crossed, metaphorically, the whole time he's checking her out. The universe owes him one, and it's decided to make good. The car is a big block '68 Nova SS, in a shade of purple neither nature nor Chevy ever intended. She's smaller than the Impala was, but faster, built for speed and not for power. There are probably less than a hundred of them still on the road. Finding her like this is like finding the Holy Grail in your cereal box.

Best of all, there's nothing so wrong he can't fix it. She hasn't been treated like a lady, the way he and Dad treated the Impala. At a guess she was some rich kid's baby, left behind in a shed or garage for years and years and then sold to wrecker for parts. But they haven't gotten around to tearing her down, and the number on her windshield is one he can just about manage. He loves her, easily and instantly, and that's when he realizes that maybe everything will work out.


End file.
